ervin’s piece of web

I obviously survived the trip… It’s nice to be home again. I’ll surely miss a bit the MIT Stata Center it’s really a unique building (as you might notice from the linked pictures).

For the last day in Boston, I managed to walk a bit around before going to the airport, it was pleasant. Moreover I managed to buy postcard… but not stamps. The only place I’ve found stamps I needed to use a machine and I didn’t figure out how to use it. So I’ll deliver my postcards by hand it seems.

In the airport I noticed that the booked Paris/Toulouse flight was planned for Paris Orly, while I was supposed to arrive in Paris CDG… hmm changing airport, lot of trouble ahead. Luckily the Air France crew in the Boston airport was kind enough to modify my ticket in order to get my connection in CDG, which doesn’t mean “no trouble” either since CDG is really messy. Here what happened. My plane landed in the terminal 2F but we didn’t have the right to go in 2F ourselves, so we had to take a bus to go in 2C (still following?). But (and that’s where it starts to be ridiculous), when I arrived in 2C I had to take yet another bus since I was supposed to check-in my Paris/Toulouse flight in 2F… that’s sick. In particular when you have only 30 minutes between the two flights. But, I don’t care anymore I’m finally home!

Now it’s time to relax a bit, before going back to work tomorrow. I’m also happy to see that some of my feelings about the discussions I had during the Gnome Summit are shared. It was definitely worth it, thanks again to all the people involved!

Today is my last day in Boston. I’ll take my flight back to France in a few hours. I’m taking my time, relaxing a bit before I take my plane. I’ll surely go to the airport early and try to buy postcards from there… I didn’t manage to find an open postoffice, since it’s the Thanksgiving week-end, lot of shops are closed.

This week-end was really nice, attending this summit was really a great opportunity. I’ve been well accepted there, we had fruitful discussions, and I hope it’ll be the beginning of a better collaboration between KDE and Gnome in some important areas. We can definitely do a lot of interesting things and push the UNIX desktop at another level. It could become the only platform I know proposing two different desktops (in philosophy, etc.) while keeping consistency when it makes sense with shared frameworks under the hood. Of course, it’ll be a permanent trade-off to also keep diversity, and we’ll have to make compromises in order to make everybody happy… interesting times.

Finally, the funny thing is that I more or less discovered two cultures this week-end, the american culture and the Gnome hacker culture. Yes, they have a different culture in their own community, and that’s perfectly fine: diversity. I like to go in another country and discover some different habits, way of thinking, etc. I had this exact same feeling with the fellow Gnome hackers. Of course, I’m also happy to go back home, both in my country and in the KDE community.

Now, it’s time for me to move on, I’ll take a breakfast/lunch in one or two hours, and then try to find my way to the airport. I’ll surely won’t blog before I get home. See you later all!

This morning I woke up early, even if I get back to the hotel a bit late yesterday. We had dinner in the Cambridge Brewing Company yesterday night… It’s really an interesting concept, this bar/restaurant does its own beer! It’s really a nice restaurant… and of course a loooot of beer has been drunk at my table. Since most of the people I had dinner with arrived a bit late today, I suppose it was a bit hard for them to wake up.

Finally, this morning we basically waited for people to arrive. Once again I was the first one in the Stata Center, changing timezone has some advantages after all, so I used some of my time putting together slides about my views on the current status of FreeDesktop.org and how we could improve some things. Of course, I know some of my positions might not be shared, but I consider that it’s a nice way to try to present the “fd.o perception from the random KDE guy” now that I met some Gnome hackers.

I attended the DBUS BoF, it was interesting. It was the last BoF before lunch, so I jumped out of the room and fought again for pizza, another round of free food!

After lunch, we took some time with David Zeuthen and John Palmieri to discuss about HAL, NetworkManager, DBUS, etc. It opened some interesting opportunities for collaborating. I’m confident it’ll give some interesting results, some things are already in the pipe. I gave to David my slides about FreeDesktop, it could be the start of a broader thinking about FreeDesktop to go toward improvements.

It looks like we’ll sooner or later prove that we can get really good relationships between Gnome and KDE and share when it makes sense.

Woke up early this morning, so I started looking at my mails. And then prepared to go out. I decided to not take my breakfast in the hotel (don’t ask me why… I was just tempted by taking a “pedestrian breakfast”. I walked down the street in the general direction for the subway station. Explored a bit the streets around, and found a place to buy a breakfast, took a “small” hot chocolate (and they’re not joking since I burnt my mouth) and a muffin… The chocolate was far enough for me (and they call this “small”!), the muffin was big. Everything is larger here, cars are larger, street are largers, train are larger… I’m not a tall guy, and I feel even smaller here. =)

Took my breakfast under the rain, next to a tree (in order to protect myself) in a park near my hotel. And then took the subway, it went almost smoothly (had some difficulties finding the right track in the station) and reached the MIT Stata Center easily… but, very early! I was there at 8am (but the event starts at 9am). I helped some people around to prepare stuff for the attendance, and people where slowly coming.

I chatted a bit with people around they generally look amazed when I tell them that I’m a KDE developer (”what the hell is he doing here?”) but that’s well accepted of course, they are friendly. I feel like a diplomat, I’ve already some possibilities for cooperation between both projects through books ideas someone raised to me. I have to admit that it’s really tempting… some topics we could cover would be interesting.

My diplomat role became even more “official” during the presentation session, during this session everybody had to introduce themselves. I then stated that I was basically here to improve collaboration and sharing in my own area (hardware discovery and interaction) but that if some Gnome developers wanted to point some other area where we could do better, they just have to ask me and then I’ll take the time to push the information to the right persons in the KDE community. Ok, we have the FreeDesktop but most Gnome people don’t know KDE people working in the same topics (and vice versa).

For lunch, we had loooot of pizza sponsored by IBM. Very good idea, free geek food!

I contacted David Zeuthen already, he’s really friendly and passionated about his work. I’m sure it’ll be really a pleasure to work more with him in the future. Because of the small discussions we had with him and some other people working on DBUS or HAL, we’ll surely have a BOF about FreeDesktop tomorrow.

This evening I’ll surely go to dinner with other people that expressed an interest in improving the collaboration between both projects. It’ll surely be interesting. Overall, I’m really happy to be here, doing all that.

Today started with a call from Air France informing me that my flight from Toulouse to Paris CDG had been cancelled. Grrreat! Initially they only proposed me to take another flight going to Paris Orly (which means troubles to get to Paris CDG) or to reschedule for tomorrow (which is plain stupid when you have just two days). I told them I need some time to think about it (and take a shower and shave…). They finally called me back again proposing another flight going to CDG directly… but I had only 45 minutes to reach the airport and check-in. Which meant no breakfast… and possibly troubles for going from home to the airport. But thanks to E. (a fellow PhD student) who kindly proposed to take me to the airport I was in time!

And that was the start of a looooong day… since I got to CDG earlier than expected I waited more hours before taking my flight to Boston. I was wondering if the situation was about to get worse to the point where I would actually live in CDG (something similar to Tom Hanks situation in The Terminal).

The flight went well, lot of time… reading, watching movies, “eating” in the plane, and finally we landed! Some formality with the border… which looks impressive to me. I mean they took my fingerprints, and a picture of me. As if the passport wasn’t enough… weird.

The last step was to reach the hotel, I took a courtesy bus and surprise the driver was speaking french almost fluently.

So now, I’m writing this from the hotel, using the free wifi network. It’s really terrific, this is the best hotel I have ever seen! I had almost the feeling that I landed in another planet when I entered it. It looks a bit retro, that’s really a nice touch. I definitely like it.

Ok, time to sleep now… otherwise it’ll be difficult to be productive.

Yes, I’ll obviously attend this year Gnome Summit. I expect this to be very interesting, I’m planning to meet at least a part of the HAL crew… I’ll surely learn a lot of things which is always a good thing. I’m looking forward to meet clee again, I just hope I’ll interact more with him this time (we didn’t succeed during Malaga, shame).

I’ll take my flight tomorrow around noon. I hope I won’t be too tired when I’ll land there. I just need to finish to pack my stuff, I’m almost done.

That’s really a great opportunity, I’m really feeling a lot of gratitude for Waldo and the persons at Intel involved in this trip. It would have been impossible to make it without this Intel sponsoring.

You Should Learn Swedish

Fantastisk! You’re laid back about learning a language - and about life in general. Peaceful, beautiful Sweden is ideal for you… And you won’t even have to speak perfect Swedish to get around!

Funny, Sweden is one of the rare countries I’d consider to immigrate… So after all, why not learning swedish? Moreover the only swedish people I know are really nice (hello psn and inge! ;-)).